Prying Similar Names Apart

I heard on the news the other night that the county has decided to change the  names of a lot of streets with similar names.  They said it could cost lives if the ambulances and/or fire trucks and/or policemen go the wrong street that was called in.

Duh!  Do you think?

Back in the 1990s in Cobb County and Marietta there were two roads named Tower Road.  One of the Tower Roads went by the hospital and the other Tower Road was about eight or nine miles away, off Pete Shaw Road.

There is an assistant living on Tower Road  one block from the hospital.  The name of  the assistant living is Atherton Place, and if my Postal memory is correct, it is  on 111 Tower Road.   Tower Road near downtown and beside the hospital had three digit numbers.  The Tower Road  eight miles away had four digit numbers.  That Tower Road number range was in the 4000s.

One night somebody called 911 because someone was having a heart attack on Tower Road and they gave them the number.  It was a 3 digit number, which in this case was at Atherton Place Assistant Living.   The ambulance went to the Tower Road eight miles away and couldn't find the address.  The person at Atherton Place died. 

The officials then decided to  form a group to check all the streets for duplicate or similar names so this kind of incident would not happen again.   The first thing they was to change the Tower Road eight miles away to Indian Town Road.   

For over a year a few people made up of Postal and  local government  employees combed the names of the streets to  remedy name confusion.

A lot of street names were changed.

In subdivisions sometimes almost every street has a similar name, maybe they all start with Arbor Forest or Rocky Falls and then have Circle, Court,  Drive, Place, etc.... That reminds me did you know there are over 200 streets in Atlanta that have Peachtree in the name?

Why is the county doing it again?   What did they learn from the last time?